Man I've fought a few rounds with the Banner Link in my dedicated server. It seems more a matter of luck than specific requirements.
As I understand it these are the requirements (though I've read some contrary information as well) for the banner link:
- Must be a PNG image
- Must be saved at a color depth greater than 8bit
- Must be 512 X 256 (this is one that I've read posts to the contrary)
- Must NOT be hosted on a secure HTTP site (no HTTPS links)
- I read somewhere also that the filename of the image shouldn't have spaces
I think that about covers the requirements. Here is what I've done. I took an image off of the net that has a resolution greater than 512 X 256. It was originally in JPG format. I then edited it in Paint.NET and scaled it to a horizontal length of 512 pixels which left me with a vertical length of 373 pixels if memory serves. I cropped it to 512 X 256 and did some other minor editing. I saved it in PNG format using 32bit color depth.
While experimenting with the editing / formatting, I was also trying different hosting sites. Imgur, Photobucket, and OneDrive. It was at this time that I found a post about banner links that said it had to be hosted from a non-secure HTTP site, so that was when I found HTTPS links were out. So I stopped trying to use OneDrive because either all they issue are HTTPS links, or I couldn't find where to set it to a non-secure HTTP link. With the editing and hosting intermingled, I probably tried 20 different permutations. Each time I editing my banner link via the WebUI, I received the broken image icon shown below the link. Of course even with a server restart this didn't fix this and the MOTD was missing when I joined the server. That was until I had fully edited the image as above and the link I used was from Photobucket and walla I could see my banner in the WebUI. I was ecstatic thinking I had finally sorted it out, it had never shown up in the WebUI until this point, just the broken image icon. So with heart racing I jumped on the server to see what it looked like (after wasting many hours) and nothing, no MOTD at all, just like before. Then I thought maybe I should restart the server, "that'll fix it" I thought. Restart the server, join it again from my client and again no MOTD.
So hopefully someone out there has some advice on how to fix this or at least shed some light on what I'm possibly doing wrong.
I'm not here to grief Tripwire, they've really progressed the level of polish and added content over the last couple months. However it is my hope that Tripwire addresses the robustness (or apparent lack of) of the banner link feature of the dedicated server. This seems like a fairly common / necessary feature of a dedicated server and it shouldn't be this difficult to get working. I realize that there are probably many more important things to do to the game, but I'd hope that some time would be spent on this before the release date of Nov 18.
As I understand it these are the requirements (though I've read some contrary information as well) for the banner link:
- Must be a PNG image
- Must be saved at a color depth greater than 8bit
- Must be 512 X 256 (this is one that I've read posts to the contrary)
- Must NOT be hosted on a secure HTTP site (no HTTPS links)
- I read somewhere also that the filename of the image shouldn't have spaces
I think that about covers the requirements. Here is what I've done. I took an image off of the net that has a resolution greater than 512 X 256. It was originally in JPG format. I then edited it in Paint.NET and scaled it to a horizontal length of 512 pixels which left me with a vertical length of 373 pixels if memory serves. I cropped it to 512 X 256 and did some other minor editing. I saved it in PNG format using 32bit color depth.
While experimenting with the editing / formatting, I was also trying different hosting sites. Imgur, Photobucket, and OneDrive. It was at this time that I found a post about banner links that said it had to be hosted from a non-secure HTTP site, so that was when I found HTTPS links were out. So I stopped trying to use OneDrive because either all they issue are HTTPS links, or I couldn't find where to set it to a non-secure HTTP link. With the editing and hosting intermingled, I probably tried 20 different permutations. Each time I editing my banner link via the WebUI, I received the broken image icon shown below the link. Of course even with a server restart this didn't fix this and the MOTD was missing when I joined the server. That was until I had fully edited the image as above and the link I used was from Photobucket and walla I could see my banner in the WebUI. I was ecstatic thinking I had finally sorted it out, it had never shown up in the WebUI until this point, just the broken image icon. So with heart racing I jumped on the server to see what it looked like (after wasting many hours) and nothing, no MOTD at all, just like before. Then I thought maybe I should restart the server, "that'll fix it" I thought. Restart the server, join it again from my client and again no MOTD.
So hopefully someone out there has some advice on how to fix this or at least shed some light on what I'm possibly doing wrong.
I'm not here to grief Tripwire, they've really progressed the level of polish and added content over the last couple months. However it is my hope that Tripwire addresses the robustness (or apparent lack of) of the banner link feature of the dedicated server. This seems like a fairly common / necessary feature of a dedicated server and it shouldn't be this difficult to get working. I realize that there are probably many more important things to do to the game, but I'd hope that some time would be spent on this before the release date of Nov 18.
